I Get My Glory in the Desert Rain
by Insomniac Owl
Summary: The stranger at the bus stop said they'd change the world. Sasuke can live with that. AU.


**I Get my Glory in the Desert Rain**

_By Insomniac Owl_

* * *

><p>"Come with me," the stranger says, as Sasuke waits at a bus-stop in a town whose name he doesn't know, for a bus that will take him somewhere he cannot name. It is very early in the morning. There is no one else waiting – just him and this man, whose eyes reflect the light of the rising sun.<p>

"Sorry?" Sasuke says.

"Some things are meant to be. This is one of them." The stranger looks at him sideways, then says quietly: "We'll change the world, you and I."

He looks into the man's eyes, and it is like looking into a deep pool of water to find his own face staring back at him. The stranger takes him by the wrist, and Sasuke, who on good days would tell you he does not believe in destiny, grips the coins in his pocket and follows.

**x**

This is what Sasuke knows: that his parents are dead, that his elder brother left him to the state six years ago and hasn't been heard from since. That afterward Sasuke lived in a tiny apartment, attended high school, made no friends. That he has been alone for most of his life. He's being honest when he says it didn't bother him, but for as long as he can remember there has been something lodged in his chest, burning softly against his ribcage. If asked, Sasuke would label it 'need', though for what he doesn't know. It did not respond to schoolwork or his few, brief relationships; it did not respond to alcohol.

This is what Sasuke doesn't know: who the stranger is, what he wants from Sasuke, where they are going and what they are doing and why they are doing it. He knows the stranger's name now – Orochimaru – but not why it sounds so familiar. He doesn't know why he went with him that morning. He's just glad he did.

The second night in Orochimaru's house, Sasuke can't sleep. He hadn't expected it to be so big, with so many empty rooms and so much darkness, and it's only worse at night, when the overhang of the roof blocks out the moon and the closeness of the walls make him feel like he's suffocating. When he throws his sheets off it's almost two in the morning. He puts his feet in his blue slippers, then slips out into the hallway, unsure of where he's headed.

He gets halfway down the hallway before he notices the kitchen light on. It's strange, for Sasuke, who has lived alone for so long he can't remember if anyone else stays awake as long as he does, and he turns down the hallway. His first thought is that there's someone there that shouldn't be. Someone's broken in. He pushes the door open, slowly, but it's just Orochimaru, bent over papers at the kitchen table.

Orochimaru's glance upward is distracted and brief. "Sasuke," he says. He doesn't continue, and Sasuke stares at him, remembers being the only one at his university's library at four in the morning, back to one shelf, knees wedged against the next.

"What is this?" Sasuke asks, touching the papers with his fingertips.

Sasuke knows the look on his face then, the one where you judge how much information to give, if any. Eventually Orochimaru smiles. It's a strange smile, pleased but mostly smug, that matches the hungry widening of his eyes.

The ache in Sasuke's chest pulsates like a second heart.

He pulls a chair toward him, then pen and paper, because if he is going to do this he is going to do it right, and as efficiently as possible.

"Stupid boy!" Orochimaru says, when he sees Sasuke with the paper. He snatches it away, and Sasuke leaps to his feet, glaring, but Orochimaru is reaching for a lighter he keeps in the cupboard with the glasses.

"What good is a code if you put the key in writing?" he demands, and Sasuke stops, then grins in spite of himself. Orochimaru's angry, yes, but that's alright. He can make himself cold, the way he did under his father's disappointment – the important thing is that the restlessness nestled in his chest these past few years is gone, vanished in the wisps of smoke rising from across the table.

**x**

After a month in Orochimaru's company, Sasuke is used to the shady backroom deals, the whispered conversations in the dark. Orochimaru likes him there when these things happen, but Sasuke finds them boring, and often spends the time standing with his hands folded into one another, staring at the people's faces. It unnerves them. Orochimaru thinks it's funny.

He learns things in that room, though, about leadership and planning and organization. He learns who to trust; he learns to read eyes and body language, and he learns, too, how to put fear in the hearts of the men before him, the tilt of his head and slant of his eyes that will make them tremble and shake and obey without question.

"You have a gift." Orochimaru says one day, when their last appointment has gone. He's staring at Sasuke when he says it. Sasuke's breath stops in his throat, in fear or awe he doesn't know, but he stares back until the corners of Orochimaru's mouth turn up, until he laughs and stands and leaves.

**x**

In the courtyard there is a plot of sand with lines drawn through it. It is a maze, and each morning Orochimaru rakes the sand smooth and creates one anew. They are lessons, he tells Sasuke, because if Sasuke is going to be his pupil he is going to be the best.

They are difficult, frustrating mazes, more complicated than anything Sasuke has seen before. A week passes. He loses count of the times he's tracked circles in the sand, ending up back at the beginning after an hour of work; eventually he realizes they're insolvable.

"So what the hell am I supposed to do with them?" Sasuke asks that evening, cornering Orochimaru in the hallway.

The corners of his mouth twitch up.

"Keep trying."

Sasuke spends two hours on the next day's maze, making it halfway through before he hits the last dead end. There's nothing else for him to try, and he makes a disgusted little noise in the back of his throat, then drags his palm to the center, straight through borders and broken lines, because he's sick of this, sick of these mazes and the riddles without answers.

Orochimaru, who has been watching from his open bedroom door, steps out into the courtyard. When he reaches Sasuke he stands for a moment in silence, looking down at the maze, then his eyes flick to Sasuke's. They aren't angry or disgusted; rather, there is something like satisfaction in them, and about his mouth, too.

"Congratulations," he says quietly.

**x**

A week from then, whatever business Orochimaru is conducting goes wrong. Sasuke stands in the back, where the sunlight can't reach him, so when the man pulls a gun and misses Orochimaru he hits Sasuke instead. The next instant Sasuke is on the floor and the man lies dying on the carpet, mouth open like a landed fish, and Orochimaru has the gun in one hand. Sasuke can't see his face, but his shoulders are rigid.

"Why did I come with you that day," he asks later, panting, as Orochimaru digs the bullet from his leg, "if this is all I'm going to get for it?"

Orochimaru wears a white robe, and because of the painkillers and the sun streaming in through the window he looks like a Shinto priest, and this looks like a deathbed. There is blood all over his hands, and on the gun, half loaded but forgotten on the floor.

"I told you," Orochimaru says. "It's meant to be."

"I don't believe in stuff like that."

"Well. It's not like it matters," Orochimaru says, reaching for the disinfectant at his elbow. "You're going along with it anyway, aren't you?"

Sasuke thinks Orochimaru uses destiny as an excuse for his actions. There is not enough morality left in him to recognize what he does as wrong, but he has to have something to pull people in with. Fate is part of his hook. Sasuke recognizes this, recognizes the danger in it and accepts it anyway, because he is attracted to the power of Orochimaru's ideas, and couldn't care less if they drag him down. Having a goal makes him feel solid in a way he hasn't felt since his family was alive, and he isn't willing to give that up.

"You'll be fine," Orochimaru tells him gently, pressing gauze to the wound. "Stupid boy."

**x**

When Sasuke puts weight on his leg, sharp needles flare up his spine and his thigh feels like it's falling apart. He can't walk long distances. The first day after, he can't even make it across his bedroom, which means he can't go with Orochimaru to meet people, that all he can do is read and translate papers.

As a result, he gets to see what Orochimaru is planning. Nothing makes sense at first, because each paper is an individual order, and no two fit together quite right, but late one night Sasuke sits back in his chair, stares at the papers spread over the table, and sees what amounts to a carefully planned series of assassinations.

It should be strange, that he doesn't care these people will die. This fact alone should make him uneasy, make him want to slip away in the middle of the night and never look back. But it doesn't. He doesn't feel anything about it at all, because what he's a part of makes him feel whole. He can _see_ these goals. He will achieve them. He will hold this victory in the palm of his hand, and it will be _glo_rious.

Once he sees his goal, however, it is impossible to sit still. He can't walk, but he hobbles across the kitchen until the pain sets in and he has to sit, breathing with his hands clenched over his thighs. "I'm going with you," he says, two weeks after, stepping in front of Orochimaru at the front door. His fists are clenched at his sides, not touching his thigh, and when he speaks the words are as calm and convincing as he can make them. He doesn't tremble.

Orochimaru looks at him, gaze falling from Sasuke's face to his leg. "Your leg is still healing."

Sasuke shifts his weight, standing more on his injured leg just to prove that he can, and moves to block the door. "You can't leave me here with nothing to do," he says. "I'm going crazy."

"You'll only be a nuisance."

"I can sit down, can't I?" His leg trembles. "_Please_."

Orochimaru brushes past him, and when the front door closes Sasuke claps a hand to his thigh, sinks to the ground beside the shoe-rack, and inhales hard enough to keep himself from sobbing.

**x**

When they bring the boy in Sasuke sucks in a breath and cannot think.

He's never seen him before, he's sure of that, but his chest aches in a way he'd been trying for months to forget. The boy glares at him. Sasuke, stopped at the bottom of the stairwell, puts a hand on the banister. The boy has blonde hair and clear blue eyes, and bloodied scratches on his face where he fought too hard, and for a moment, until he remembers to breathe again, Sasuke feels he knows the boy, that he's known him for years and this is the end of a long journey he can't remember setting out on.

Then he inhales, cool, dusty air filling his mouth, and the feeling fades.

They bring the boy through the kitchen doors, out of sight, probably down into the basement. It is a small, lonely place, their basement; the boy will be miserable there.

Sasuke feels a vague stirring of pity, then looks out the window at the second floor landing, through the dirty glass, and thinks calmly that, sometimes, you've got to make sacrifices.

**x**

"What's your name?" he asks the boy, two days later. The basement is as he remembers it from the only other time he's been here – bare walls, concrete floor, cold, dim, lonely and miserable. Sasuke holds a plate of food in one hand, commandeered from the woman who was supposed to bring it in, and looks at the way the boy's hands are twisted behind his back. It must be painful.

"Why?" the boy asks.

Sasuke doesn't answer. It's something he picked up from Orochimaru, this cool, tempered silence, but the cold eyes, well – that's all Sasuke. "You're not getting this food," he says, "until you tell me."

The boy laughs, a harsh bark that echoes on the concrete walls, and grins. The gesture is all teeth, malicious and desperate. "You must be Sasuke," he says. And then, after a pause, "I'm Naruto."

Sasuke drops the plate in the boy's lap, watches him wriggle until he has it balanced on his knees. He eats like he's starving, which he probably is; Orochimaru isn't kind to his prisoners. And Sasuke knows the boy's a prisoner. He doesn't know why, though, doesn't know how this boy fits into the assassinations and all the other plans. He can't do anything but think, these days, because of his leg, and he keeps coming back to this kid, what he's doing here, whether he'll die.

"Why did he bring you here?" Sasuke asks, watching him eat.

"No idea."

"Who are you?"

The boy looks up, still chewing. "I told you. Naruto. Naruto Uzumaki."

Sasuke leans down, just enough to make his leg twinge, and says, half under his breath, "That can't be everything. He wouldn't have brought you here if it was. Who are your parents? Where did you grow up?"

"I don't know my parents. And, you wanna know where I grew up, ask those bastards who kidnapped me."

"You're an orphan," Sasuke says.

Nothing is making sense. As far as Sasuke can see, this boy doesn't fit into Orochimaru's plans at all. He's no one, just a stupid kid with no manners, and if Orochimaru thought he'd ever want to use him he wouldn't treat him like this. Sasuke's mind slows, eyes fixating on nothing as he works through possibilities, and still comes up empty. If Orochimaru is going to do something with this boy, Sasuke hasn't heard about it.

"You're one too, aren't you," the boy says suddenly. "An orphan, I mean. It's the one thing everyone I've talked to has in common."

Sasuke leans back. "How'd you find that out?"

"I'm not an idiot. One guy mentioned he was, and then I just asked everyone else. They told me the truth."

"You assume they did," Sasuke says.

"No, I can tell. But, look, don't you get it? That's how that guy's holding you here; it's where he gets his power over you, because you don't have anywhere else to go. He says the right things, and everyone just comes to him." He's getting excited, and the earnestness in his face almost makes Sasuke laugh.

"You're wrong."

The boy glares, shoves himself forward until the ties cut into his wrists. "Then why the hell are you here?" he asks.

"I don't know." Sasuke's eyes are distant and calm, and he looks at the boy without seeing him. "Maybe it's destiny."

**x**

His leg is getting better, but only a little; it's not whole enough that he can walk without the crutches he refuses to use, which is probably why he ends up in the basement again. He can manage the stairs. They're out of the boy's line of sight, and Sasuke can go as slow as he wants as long as he's quiet.

"I'm getting out," the boy says, cheeks stuffed with food, as Sasuke's leaving.

Sasuke pauses, doesn't but turn around. "Who told you that?"

"No one. I'm gonna escape."

Sasuke drops his head a little, the corners of his mouth twitching. Such a stupid boy, he thinks. Such a stupid, stupid boy. "You shouldn't tell me things like that," he says. "Remember who I am?"

"Doesn't matter," the boy says. "I don't think you'll tell anyone. Anyway, isn't that what prisoners are supposed to do? Plan their escape?"

Sasuke laughs, and the boy, mistaking it for humor, laughs too. He's still smiling when Sasuke bends to take the empty plate from the floor, but the expression doesn't match his body language. He bristles then shrinks away, caught between defiance and fear, and Sasuke, watching him from the corner of his eyes, feels something stir in his chest. Interest.

He straightens, folds the plate under his arm.

"Let's see what you do, then," he says quietly, and turns and walks away.

**x**

But three days later the boy hasn't done a thing, and Sasuke's interest wavers, then begins to wane. He stays on the ground floor. He reads. He walks as much as he can. Restlessness settles in his chest like lung disease and again and again he corners Orochimaru in the hallway, begging to go with him.

Another two weeks pass before he's frustrated and angry enough to do something. Early one morning, on a day he knows Orochimaru is meeting someone, he shoves his crutches out one of the side windows, then limps to the car. He sits in the back, slumped down with his hands wedged between his knees, and thinks of another morning in another town, of fog and loneliness and a man with golden eyes made pale by the rising sun.

The sound of footsteps startles him. He straightens, but by the time he's really aware of what's happening the door has already opened, and Orochimaru is sliding into the driver's seat. Their eyes meet, and Sasuke's lungs spasm – but Orochimaru has already turned away, toward the dashboard, to shove the key into the ignition.

"So this is what I had to do?" Sasuke asks, voice low and biting against the sudden roar of the heater. Reaching to adjust his coat, he almost misses Orochimaru's smile, wide and pleased and out of place, somehow, in the pedestrian interior of the car.

"Don't you remember the mazes?"

Sasuke's chest clenches. "Just drive," he says, and turns to look out the window.

It's quiet, without the radio on, and Sasuke finds his mind wandering. He thinks about the boy again, about his strange grin and the desperate fear in his eyes.

"That kid," he says quietly, as they enter another city. "The one in the basement. Who is he?"

"His father used to be important," Orochimaru says. "He isn't anymore."

"He said he was an orphan."

"Yes."

Sasuke's eyes narrow. "So you know who his father is. But why kidnap him?"

"Because now this man's son is important."

"That doesn't tell me anything," Sasuke says, glaring at him in the rearview mirror.

Orochimaru laughs. "There are secrets I can't tell even you, Sasuke." Pausing, he reaches for a small box from the passenger seat, twisting to keep his eyes on the road. "Come sit up here."

He hands the box over his shoulder, and for a moment Sasuke just stares at it, thinking of the look on the boy's face when Sasuke laughed at him, the determination in his voice. But he thinks too of late night's spent swapping papers with Orochimaru, of the smiles he sometimes gets. He thinks of the years-long ache in his chest, the boredom, the loneliness.

"Sure," he says, and reaches for the box.

**x**

The meeting is short, and boring, and when he leaves it Sasuke feels no different than when he arrived. He is quiet, walking back to the car, staring at the sidewalk without interest.

"In the car this morning," Orochimaru says, not looking at him, "you looked the way you did the day I found you. And you look that way again."

_You look lost_, Sasuke fills in, stopping, shoving his hands in his pockets. He still feels it, that aching sense of displacement, but it's easier to hide when he has other things to concentrate on. Now, out of the meeting, it's coming back. "Look," he says. And stops, unsure what to say, letting his hesitation fade into silence.

Orochimaru stares, head going back a little. Then he takes him by the wrist and pulls him into an alleyway, presses his mouth to Sasuke's, and his tongue is warm and this is the first time Sasuke has ever, really been kissed.

He keeps his hands down. The bricks are cool against his back, and he stares at the wall opposite and thinks that what Orochimaru is doing is alright, if it helps Sasuke get what he wants. To be honest, though, Sasuke doesn't know what that is anymore. What he wants is a negative, an empty space. He wants an absence of something, and that's impossible to chase down.

So he lets Orochimaru kiss him. And when that isn't enough he lets Orochimaru slide his hands up Sasuke's shirt, down his pants, lets him touch his teeth to Sasuke's neck. It is strange but not uncomfortable, and sometime after Orochimaru pulls him into the alleyway, when he can't catch his breath, Sasuke realizes he was wrong. All this time he's been wrong. He presses himself to the wall, mouth half open, thinks he wants Orochimaru, he wants this; he wants everything. Everything.

The world shrinks to a pinprick, then explodes.

**x**

The world is trembling. The basement floor under Sasuke's feet, the wall he's leaning against, these things quiver, minutely, vibrations so small he almost misses them. Maybe it's because of the medication he's taking, but in his head it makes perfect sense to assume it's because Orochimaru pulled him into an alleyway, pressed his lips to his and fucked him twice. Sasuke opens his eyes, inhales, feels his mouth smile. Since then he's felt full of possibility. The world has dropped at his feet, and it's all his, he can do anything.

A few feet away, Naruto is finishing his food. "I'm leaving tomorrow," he says. His mouth is full when he says it, and he ends up spitting bits of fried meat on Sasuke's shoes, but he's serious.

Sasuke wants to laugh. Instead he stares at the ceiling, presses his fingertips against the cool cement at his back, remembering the feel of Orochimaru's mouth against his throat, Orochimaru's fingers against his ribs.

"I'm coming with you," he says.

He doesn't see it, but he knows Naruto's mouth drops open, then closes into a grin. "I knew you'd come around. Okay. Okay so, here's what I'm gonna do."

Sasuke stands with his eyes closed, leg bent against the wall, only half-listening. Sometimes, he thinks calmly, one has to make sacrifices. His lips twist into a strange, crooked little smile, and as Naruto's voice fills the basement Sasuke concentrates on breathing, and stops listening altogether.

**x**

The gun Sasuke had been shot with is still on his bedside table, untouched. The next morning he takes all the cartridges out, wipes them clean, and thumbs them in again, one by one, letting them rattle in his palm like dice. One two three four, and one empty space. He rolls the chamber back into place, slides the gun into his pocket. Stands.

The house is quiet. The basement door squeaks, but not too loudly; if Naruto hadn't already been awake he wouldn't have heard it. When Sasuke reaches the bottom of the stairs, Naruto's face breaks into a grin. His body is tense and anxious, hands jerking against his ties every now and then in his excitement.

"I wasn't sure you were gonna come," he says, as Sasuke bends to undo his ties. "I mean, I know you said you would, but you weren't really listening when I told you the plan."

Sasuke shrugs, says nothing. When the ties are gone Naruto get so this feet, flexing his hands and stretching, once, up on his toes, and his expression settles. It isn't a grin anymore; it's a sort of hard determination. For the first time Sasuke sees something other than a prisoner, and he wonders what kind of person Naruto had been outside of this place, what he's done and seen and been through, if they would have been friends. No, he decides a moment later. No. Certainly not.

"Was anyone up?" Naruto asks. He's turned away, prying open the tiny basement window.

"No."

"Okay, well… if anyone sees us, just pretend I escaped and you were chasing me down, okay? They'll believe you." He slams his palm against the screen until it gives way with a snap, popping off into the grass, then wipes his hands on his jeans. "Okay. Okay, alright."

Sasuke stops listening the moment Naruto starts speaking. Hands in his pockets, he looks out through the open window, where the light is weak and the sky a pale, uncertain blue. It's fitting, Sasuke thinks. All the important things in his life have happened at dawn. He breathes, expectant, blood singing fast and thin in his ears, then pulls the gun from his pocket, raises it, and pulls the trigger. _Click._

Naruto jerks around. "What the -"

He fires again. This time the barrel of the gun jerks up with a sharp crack, and a hole appears in Naruto's chest. A small hole, nothing too terrible, but Naruto's eyes are wide and very, very blue; when he falls his body jerks and stutters and when he dies it is utterly without peace.

And then it's quiet.

Sasuke stares at the blood on the floor, at the body with its hands thrown up over its head, and thinks there's no glory in this at all.

**x**

His sleep is deep and clean and dreamless, and when he wakes it is just past two in the afternoon. He lies there for some time, not doing anything. He feels heavy, drugged and slow, head aching in the sunlight. I was supposed to feel different, he thinks. He pulls a hand through his hair, drops both palms against the sheets. Something starts, low in the back of his throat, building up to his eyes until he's panting and digging his nails into his knees and crying, and not even for any reason that he can think of, because he doesn't feel bad about killing Naruto, exactly, just… calm. Sasuke feels very calm, except that he's crying.

He's losing track of what Orochimaru says is destiny, and what's just him running away.

**x**

That night at dinner, Orochimaru leans back in his chair and stares at Sasuke for a long time. Sasuke ignores it, at first, but he knows what it's about, and eventually he lays his chopsticks down and waits. It doesn't take long.

"There was a mess in the basement this morning," Orochimaru says. The well-crafted blandness of his words gives away nothing, and Sasuke looks up, his own eyes equally level. He knows it's hopeless, because Orochimaru taught him most of this stoicism, this unreadable face, but he's forgotten everything else. He says nothing.

Orochimaru smiles. "There are cameras in that room, Sasuke." He isn't angry; if anything he seems amused, but Sasuke knows better than to trust Orochimaru's expressions. When he speaks his voice is quiet, and faintly suspicious.

"Why did you keep him here, then, if he wasn't any use to you?"

"He just needed to be out of the way. But you had the right idea – killing him was better." He smiles again, and Sasuke looks at him and knows Orochimaru has been planning this from the start. It's there, in his smile and smug expression. It's in the triumph in his eyes. Sasuke's lips tighten, and he wants both to smash his mouth against Orochimaru's so hard his teeth rattle, and pull out the gun still in his pocket and shoot him. _You played me_, he thinks. _And I didn't even notice_. He keeps himself so still he begins to tremble, and Orochimaru smirks, crosses the short distance between them, and presses his mouth to Sasuke's.

"You were meant for this," he says, and Sasuke looks at him in the evening light, at the gold in his eyes and the smile on his lips, and thinks _Yes_ only because he can't think of anything else.


End file.
